Saturday, 24 May 2014

Poem from Death Row

Received in my latest letter this week:

INEVITABALITYWhy would I ever get out of bedWhen facing the day means facing the dead.Still I arise and herein lies deathThat no dream can conquer though what else is leftOther than surrendering to this reality, or runScreaming into the medicinal haze that blots out the sun.By which I mean that human reason aloneCannot be of help where the sun has not shone.So catalogue your memories, or throw them away,And let the magic moments fall where they may,Each like a snowflake in its majestic flightThat fades into nothing in the darkness of night.My mind's eye cares not in the leastWhether the sun rises in the west or sets in the east.All these emptying cells* still fill me with dreadAs I wake every morning to go face the dead.
*Texas has already executed seven people this year. They had been on death row from between ten and twenty years. Many of those still waiting have been there for much longer.

I'm sure any form of incarceration for whole life (the alternative to the death penalty and not what we refer to as life imprisonment in this country) must also deprive people of hope. What death row must do, though, is deprive people of everything except the their bare existence. I sometimes wish that I still had the campaigning zeal I had when I was 16 but I'd all but lost it by the time I was 21.

Followers

Frances Garrood

About Me

I live with my husband in Devizes in Wiltshire where I spend my time writing, reading, riding (I am the lucky owner of a beautiful horse, Blue), and keeping up with my four children and an increasing number of small grandchildren (eight so far). I was for many years a nurse and a Relate counsellor. I have taught creative writing both at a local college and a prison, and I review a wide variety of items - including books - for the Amazon Vine programme.I write to death row prisoners in America, being a life-long opponent jof the death penalty. And I spend too much time blogging..